Concern with population growth has led to a greater awareness of individual needs for fertility regulaton and the behavior of the couple as the basic family unit. Israel offers a natural laboratory to examine the interaction of couples who are situated at various points on a continuum of modernity, and to whom modern contraception and safe abortion (although nominally illegal) have been available for several years. The study examines subgroups of Jewish and Arabic couples of Eastern, Western, and Israeli origin living in Israel and the occupied territories. They will be interviewed with regard to their subjective assessment of fertility-regulating means, their interaction and exchange of information with their marital partners, and the decision-making processes leading to their choice and use of fertility-regulating methods, and assessed as to the degree of consensus and accuracy of mutual perception between them, based on theoretical and methodological advances developed by both AIR and IIASR in the Cooperative Translational Research Program in Fertility Behavior. Implications of the study will be made for Israel, the United States, and other societies with parallel stages of fertility regulating behavior.